The words spoken Saturday by Pedro Sánchez before his federal commission rang in my ears like an alarm against an air raid. “Edmundo González is a hero that Spain is not going to abandon.”
Instead of defending his victory, recognizing him as the elected president of Venezuela, the Spanish government would allow him to leave the scene for a forced exile.
Seen and invisible. In a matter of hours, the news of his departure from the country was known by the regime itself, by none other than Delcy Rodríguez, who, through a carefully written message (whose authorship is not difficult to recognize), confirmed that González had been granted safe conduct after his request for asylum in Spain, “in accordance with legality and with a concern for tranquility and political peace.”
This is how the regime spoke and acted, which last month imprisoned more than two thousand people and killed nearly thirty in the streets, in addition to disappearing, persecuting and savagely harassing the entire opposition structure that participated in the elections. July 28.
The blow to the national mood was terrible. Nothing had been known or explained before by the opposition. But that was nothing more or less than the main effect sought. Disable the power of the citizens, let them go home, let them feel disappointed again, let the feeling of doom overwhelm them.
I wonder what a former Spanish president like Zapatero is doing, boasting of having mediated so that the legitimate and tested president elected in the Venezuelan elections would flee his country, instead of recognizing him as such and demanding that the illegitimate one immediately end his mandate. brutal display of persecution, harassment and violence.
What is the Spanish government doing by meekly supporting (I don’t know how much naivety and how much political baseness) a process with an unequivocal imprint of the Cuban secret services?
Because the model is simple and known. In this case, the goal was to get rid of the legitimate. Get him out of the country as quickly as possible in order to break the strength of the citizens, their temperament and courage to resist until the end.
Press, press. Relentlessly threaten a seventy-five-year-old man who has accepted the last challenge of his political life, but who did not imagine the price. Deploy the well-oiled machinery of Havana-SEBIN, harass all the embassies except ours, lead him like cattle to the Spanish corralito with Zapatero’s agency, and make him feel safe… when it was a question of exiling him properly, at his own request and with the plane of our armed forces already on its way.
Yes, that is what Zapatero was dedicated to in his silence. To collaborationism to remove Edmundo. To all this, we must add a possible failure of the opposition encouraged by Edmundo’s entourage, who, out of personal interest, abandoned María Corina and the entire country.
But María Corina is one of those who remain. The kind that lifts the truth of the facts like a giant bow. It took almost a day to speak, but she did so starting from the certainty of the facts: preserving the integrity of the elected president was essential, because Edmundo González Urrutia embodies in his physical person the recovered constitutionality of Venezuela. Death is useless.
But now that he is safe, Edmundo will have to continue fighting from the outside, María Corina reminds him, until the final appointment of the oath that corresponds to him in January 2025. Without fear and without rest. Let the full European tour take place. Let all the institutions be visited. Let him meet the diaspora. Because in the meantime, it remains among the Venezuelans. Unwavering. Your message smells of disappointment, but it makes the picture clear.
We do not know (and I doubt that we will ever know fully) what the conditions of this departure were. It seems that, in the fierce struggle before leaving Venezuela, the brothers Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez came to demand that González Urrutia recognize the ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice that declared Nicolás Maduro the winner of the elections after the greatest electoral fraud in the history of Latin America. They have no limits, so it is possible.
It has also been reported that former deputy Eudoro González, much loved by the Rodríguez brothers and Zapatero, a leading figure of Chavismo active within Primero Justicia, was among the negotiators. And this is where other things have been moving internally since before the elections: an opposition group of Primero Justicia that was betting and is already betting on 2030, and that believes it will benefit from this departure of Edmundo.
The fact is that the elected president of Venezuela is already in Spain with his wife, and the asylum procedures, on which our government has insisted so much, emphasizing that it was requested by Edmundo himself, will begin immediately. The resolution will undoubtedly be quick and favorable, since it will have been agreed beforehand.
This Tuesday, a non-legislative proposal will be debated in Congress, promoted by the Popular Party, which demands that Spain recognize Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner and new president of the country, condemn Zapatero’s silence and condemn Maduro’s repression.
It could be adopted in its entirety or with several of its points, since not only the PP and Vox demand the recognition of the victory of the Venezuelan opposition, but also the allies of the government such as the PNV and the Canarian Coalition.
President Sánchez will not be present, as he will continue his tour of China, but I do not rule out that the Spanish government (Minister Albares) will take Edmundo González to Congress to expose him as a socialist trophy and thus reverse the initiative, institutionalizing the money laundering of an operation that, if it has nothing, is the defense of democracy.
